Blurred Lines: A box-set of reality bending supernatural fiction (Paranormal Tales from Wales Book 9)

by Michael Christopher Carter

  If she had discovered definitively that she’d passed away, it would have crushed her. Claire’s help was vital if she was not to remain in limbo forever.

  Angharad started her car and joined the spasmodic flow of traffic. What was the time? She glanced at her watch. Just coming up to ten. She wasn’t sure how long it would take to get to Aberystwyth from here, not being a familiar route.

  Venue details had been provided by her spiritual ally in Glandy Cross. She knew to head for the old University building. With a thankful look heavenwards she prayed (her first time) she would be in time to see Claire, and to get her crucial help.

  Road signs indicated her proximity to Aberystwyth and gave no relief to the nervous driver of the smelly little Skoda. Thirty three miles. About half way there. It looked unlikely she would make it.

  Perhaps Claire would stay behind for after show drinks or something. At least the roads were clear. There seemed little chance of being stuck in traffic. If she could maintain the speed limit, her arrival should be in just over half an hour.

  She passed some pretty seaside towns and villages but was in no mood to appreciate the views of the lights in the harbour from the numerous boats, eateries and public houses.

  The little car ate up the miles. Journeying on, emotion became strong again. As she wiped tears from her eyes the danger of the visual impairment on top of her usual night blindness seemed less pertinent than it should. She couldn’t die twice, could she?

  Claire didn’t hang around for much of an after show chat with anyone. She snuck out quickly with Chris. Images of Ann prized their way into the forefront of her mind, but she forced them aside; she didn’t have the energy to cope with her, but the sheer persistence of the thought marred her enjoyment of their romantic stroll to the hotel.

  Chris gave occasional glances to his wife’s distraught face, each time he was moved to squeeze her hand. Struggling for anything to say, he eventually blurted out something just to break the silence.

  “Tomorrow’s show is a matinee, don’t forget,” he regretted reminding her as soon as he saw its effect. Claire stiffened and slowed her already sauntering pace. Considering her next performance even sooner sent a wave of nausea through her, forcing her to stop.

  Bracing herself against the painted wrought iron railings which lined the promenade, she stared out to the dark ocean, the rhythmic rolling waves affording a hypnotic comfort.

  “You okay, hun?” Chris asked, stroking a hand down her back.

  Claire nodded. “Yeah. I think so. I planned to have some quiet time and channel Ann before tomorrow’s show. That’ll have to wait.”

  “Why don’t you do it tonight? I could help you again if you like?”

  Shaking her head, she said, “No. I’m done in. I don’t have the energy.”

  Chris didn’t argue. It was painfully apparent she was right. Hoping desperately the ‘Ann situation’ would sort itself out before she suffered too much more, he took her hand again. Pulling her gently away from the railings, “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go and give that mini-bar a seeing to!”

  She allowed herself a grin. “That might just help, you know. It might just help.”

  After the third vodka cocktail from the little fridge, Claire relaxed. “What am I going to do about our Ann, then Christopher?” she asked semi-rhetorically. He shrugged.

  “I have no idea, and I don’t think you will either until you can put aside the time to give her your full attention. When we get home, you can meditate, ruminate, and consult Spirit guides to your heart’s content. It’s important you try and stay calm until then.” He leaned over and squeezed her knee. “I’m worried about you, love.”

  That was the last thing she wanted. Swigging back the dregs from her current bottle, she sat up straight. “You’re right. I’m letting this bother me far too much. Here’s to a brilliant finale to the Welsh leg of our tour.” She raised her bottle, remembering as she brought it to her lips, it was empty. “Oops. I’ll need another one of these, please, barkeep.”

  Chris smiled and hoped the probable hangover in the morning would be worth it.

  Helping her get ready for bed, encouraging her to drink plenty of water, he tucked her next to him in the sumptuous double bed. He smiled to himself as she snored gently in his arms.

  An early wake-up call had been arranged with reception. They would be away shortly after first light.

  The quiet road, more than Angharad’s attention to her driving, allowed her safe arrival in Aberystwyth a little after ten o‘clock. She quickly found the distinctive University building on the seafront and parked nearby.

  What should she do? She imagined Claire Voyant would be finishing her stage show about now. It made sense to wait close to the door and try to spot her when she came out.

  She didn’t anticipate that being a problem. Having seen her on the little screen, she was familiar with Claire’s appearance and without wanting to be rude, she deemed her larger than average build would make her easy to recognise.

  She debated waiting in the University lobby, but several reasons made it a less than attractive idea. The fear she would be lost in the crowd of people exiting the theatre and overlook Claire leaving for one thing. Being forced to wait uncomfortably whilst she chatted with appreciative fans, another.

  Mainly though, it was her fear of how other, non-psychic people, might see her. Or worse, that they wouldn’t see her, and she’d plummet to a hopeless hell before she even spoke to Claire. Hoping she wasn’t kidding herself and putting off the inevitable, she decided to wait and spot Claire when she finished talking to her adoring public.

  Quarter-past ten turned to half-past as the first of the audience made their way from the University. Angharad peered with an intense scrutiny from her car to the door of the building. She watched with unblinking steadiness, as more and more people disgorged from the exit. She presumed Claire would be conspicuously last, but couldn’t risk missing her.

  Hundreds of people, mainly women, and some plenty large enough to fit Angharad’s recollection of Claire’s appearance, just to make it more difficult to pick her out, walked from the building to cars and bus stops along the seafront.

  It was like playing real life ‘Where’s Wally’. Then the crowds diminished until there were just an intermittent few opening the doors and walking down the steps to the street below. The time in-between the doors opening and closing became longer and longer until they didn’t open anymore.

  Angharad could barely contain herself. At any moment the person who’d been calling her all week; the person who she hoped fervently would make sense of everything and send her on her way would walk out and make it all better.

  But then the time dragged and dragged, and so began a steady disquiet that she wouldn’t get her peace tonight after all. What should she do? Clenching her fists into tight balls, she pushed the rising panic from her temples and yelped in irritation.

  She had little choice but to wait and watch longer. It was likely that the star of the show might want to unwind in her dressing room. She might indulge in an after show party for all Angharad knew.

  Filled once more with tentative hope, she sat and watched the exit with fresh determination. But as the hours passed into Saturday, she fell unintentionally into a sleep fuelled by immense fatigue, and anxiety burgeoning upon madness.

  Chapter Eleven

  When she awoke in the light of dawn, she knew she’d missed the purpose of her trip to Aberystwyth. Repressing a scream of anguish, she sat frowning in silent self-contempt. Her stupidity missing the vital opportunity, which at the moment was her only hope, left her dumbfounded.

  With a grimace, she forced optimism into her awareness and decided to be kind to herself. Whilst she conceded the delay was her fault, she had to accept it as unavoidable in this deeply perturbing situation.

  A plan rapidly formed in Angharad’s troubled mind. The shop girl had said Claire Voyant’s ‘Medium at Large’ tour of Wales would be in Cardiff today
after Aberystwyth. If she got to Cardiff, she could wait outside the theatre all day until Claire arrived if necessary.

  She would have to steal herself and muster the strength to make the journey. She had no choice. Brief concerns for her little farm of animals surfaced. She was comforted the shop girl had agreed to look after them. A lump formed in her throat and she clenched her fists in anguish at the realisation they would have to manage without her forever. The shop girl would know what to do, she hoped.

  The route to Cardiff was unknown to Angharad. A rather old AA Road atlas was consulted before setting off. She knew she’d need to stop and check it often, but for now, the journey began as a straight-up trip into the mountains.

  The beautiful scenery made her wretched as she mourned her simple mountain life back in Llangolman. Driving through the unspoiled landscape in an emotional void. A vacuum sealed nothingness she scarcely existed within, on a voyage to a tentative truth.

  Steep sided gorges through high mountains looming overhead won her attention only peripherally, and with no enjoyment. But from deep within, an ember of hope smouldered. As she journeyed, her nerves wrecked from the stress of what she had endured hearing for days, the ember grew to tangible theories.

  It was understandable that, drained of energy, she might dream or even hallucinate the whole bus accident thing. It wasn’t unprecedented to wake from a realistic dream in confusion. The added stress of her fretfulness over Claire Voyant might have caused her to be even more confused than normal.

  She didn’t want to admit she was clutching at straws and certainly didn’t feel confident enough to put it to the test. And not enough to put off going to Cardiff.

  In a cloud of self-deception, she journeyed onwards. Cardiff wasn’t that far. She would have her answers soon enough.

  “What a beautiful morning!” Claire proclaimed as she stood outside the hotel taking in the crystal azure waters of the Atlantic Ocean and its backdrop of the Cambrian Mountains. She took a few health affirming deep breaths before taking to the car for their morning’s passage traversing Mid-Wales.

  “Perhaps we should come back for a holiday some time. When you can relax and enjoy it,” suggested Chris.

  Claire grinned broadly, slipping her arms through his and resting her hands on his waist. “That’s a lovely idea. We definitely should.”

  The alcohol induced slumber seemed to have benefited her as she sat serenely in the passenger seat making adjustments to her makeup in the vanity mirror of the sun visor. Chris smiled with relief as he turned the car left onto the mountain road towards the Welsh Capital a hundred and twenty miles away.

  Claire oohed and ahhed at the scenery, the reverse of the journey they’d taken the day before. Chris was about to give more guide book facts about the area when a glance across at his wife startled him. He gulped nervously.

  The troubled expression of the night before had returned. She seemed shaken up, the shock of the helplessness returning when she thought she was free from it unsettling her.

  “Okay, love?” Chris asked with another tentative glance.

  Claire shook her head. “No. It’s Ann again. But it’s not.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Chris pointed out.

  Claire’s expression remained unchanged. “It’s not ‘Ann’ it’s something else! Something that sounds like Ann.”

  She paused with her eyes so tight closed the lids fluttered. The blue veins in her eyelids visibly pulsed. She resolved to keep her own thoughts from interfering, to decipher from guidance the name that had evidently alluded her all week.

  “Angharad!” she suddenly exclaimed with unexpected zeal, pronouncing perfectly the unusual Welsh name. “It’s Angharad. Not Ann! No wonder I haven’t helped her into the light!”

  So elated to understand what had been causing her such difficulty, a smile turned to a titter and then to a full blown belly laugh as the relief of knowing what to do flooded her weary mind. Chris laughed too. His clever wife, happy and back in control, just how he liked it.

  “If we make it to Cardiff in plenty of time, I’ll sit awhile and help our Angharad to rest in peace once and for all,” she announced in triumph. Getting to Cardiff early was compromised by the narrow roads, and the fact they had unfortunately caught up with a very slow moving car.

  Round bend after bend Chris tut-tutted his way slowly along, acknowledging with every tut the impossibility of overtaking.

  “Come on. Come on,” he encouraged the driver in front in irritation. “Gaze at the scenery a little faster if you could, please.”

  Claire exploded unexpectedly in an animated flapping of her hand in front of her face.

  “What is that smell? Eeww! It smells like… rancid chip fat!”

  Chris noticed the plumes of smoke from the car in front’s exhaust pipe. “It must be that bloody car.” He nodded, indicating the leisurely moving vehicle they’d been forced to follow for a mile or more already. “It must be one of those bio-oil cars,” he declared. “Good on fuel, bad on the old hooter!” He tapped his nose.

  A gap in the road opened up after a tight turn around a steep round hill. An animal transporter lorry was coming the other way. Chris judged, with his heart pumping hard, that there was enough room to go for it… just.

  He stomped on the accelerator, forcing the automatic gear shift to kick-down into a lower gear, and the car to surge forward with the added revs and torque. Just as he steered almost past the smelly little Skoda, it swerved for no apparent reason. Chris and Claire’s car scraped along the high verge, the hedge clip-clipping the wing mirror and door sill.

  The steering twitched out of control as Claire’s passenger door almost scraped the swerving Skoda. Claire glared at the old woman she saw through the dirty glass window of the grubby old car.

  Perhaps the shock of the situation clouded Claire’s vision, but she failed to recognise the lady driver, who in turn, seemed wholly oblivious to the occupants of the overtaking car, and totally unaware of the swerve she had made that caused the collision almost certain to take place at any second.

  With the squeal of the animal truck’s brakes filling the air, the driver of the smelly Skoda braked too. In the nick of time the car slowed, allowing just enough room for Chris to squeeze their car through the small gap.

  With angry toots of horns and Chris and Claire’s hearts an audible drum beat, they were steering straight again. Claire shuddered with the release of adrenaline flooding her neuro-system.

  “F…! That was close!” she decried unnecessarily obviously. Chris could only grip the steering wheel in ashen faced silence, trying urgently to regain his composure.

  When, after a few miles, he managed to relax back to normal, he looked at Claire, horrified to see the look of conflict back on her face. He didn’t need to ask what was wrong. But Claire spoke up anyway in reply to the un-asked question.

  “It’s Ann… Sorry, Angharad” she said. “I can sense her stronger than ever”

  “She probably knows you have her name right now. She must be planning to make contact again,” Chris suggested.

  “That does sound likely doesn’t it? But it’s weird, you know? It was like she was just here!”

  Chapter Twelve

  Angharad saw the car zooming up behind her. She wasn’t about to be bullied to speed up by some impatient so-and-so. She didn’t deem it safe to go any faster in her anxious state of mind. As she turned round a twmp (small round hill) she was horrified to see the car behind edging out to overtake.

  Ridiculous! There isn’t room! You’ll hit that lorry and kill us all, she judged, failing to notice the irony. She swerved to prevent the car from passing but, undiscouraged, it decided to pass anyway.

  Confirming the danger Angharad had seen, the other car scraped along the grassy verge. Angharad concentrated on steering her own car straight on the narrow mountain road.

  When she became aware of the looming larger car speeding alongside her, she stomped hard on the brakes, turning hard
into a skid to compensate. The truck swerved and braked too, horn blaring. The idiots in the other car zoomed past.

  She could do without incidents like that if she was going to make it to Cardiff in one piece. If she wasn’t already dead, she soon would be at this rate. She pulled over into a convenient lay-by at the side of the road and tried to compose herself.

  With the incident over, the full shock of it filled her senses. It was scary, but it made her feel alive. Alive! The idiots in the other car must have seen her car or they wouldn’t have over-taken.

  She daren’t allow herself to hope. She was so muddled she couldn’t think. Getting going again was all that mattered.

  ‘Get yourself to Cardiff and find that bloody medium. You have to sort this out once and for all.”

  The mountains plateaued to a grassy range of hills that carried on infinitum, like waves of a grassy sea. The pair found it quite entrancing. Eventually, the hills parted to reveal a succession of large lakes—reservoirs formed in Victorian times by the construction of beautiful stone faced dams, providing water for Swansea.

  The wilderness seemed to go on forever, but then slowly, the occasional home became visible, until the rural Welsh Outback gave way to gentle suburbia.

  The character of the roads changed and became more and more urban, until the way to Cardiff grew clear. They would arrive in plenty of time for the matinee performance, provided the traffic didn’t get too busy.

  “I don’t want to just sit in the car to connect with Angharad. I need to be somewhere peaceful and pretty.”

  “The mountains and lakes weren’t peaceful and pretty enough?” Chris smiled.

  “Yes, of course. But I didn’t know we would have time then, did I? Besides. You had just nearly killed us!”